₦airaland Forum

I noticed that some people on Nairaland have the habit of twisting every topic so that they can insult Northern Nigerians. This is very bad. I know the Northern elite are corrupt but that doesn't make the southern elite saints. It's just that the Northerners know the crookery of politics better and somehow almost always hang up to power. Please don't hate the average Northerner for what IBB or 'Yar Adua is doing. I know that a lot of Southerners on Nairaland rejoiced when 'Yar Adua was rigged into power by Obasanjo simply because they do not like Buhari. Guys we are not Northerners or Southerners by choice, we are just born into a particular region or ethnic group. So don't hate somebody based on his ethnicity or place of origin.
A lot of Southerners tend to be too emotional and end up not properly reasoning, and that's what the Northern elite use against them.

Talking about oil, it is very important that we know that there are large proven deposits of petroleum in the North. Mainly in Borno, Bauchi and Benue. Niger republic is already extracting oil just 10km across the border from Borno State. Chad republic is already extracting it's oil for some years now. It's also not far from Borno state. Some people in north even think that it is the southerners that are working agains exploration of oil in the north.

Let us know that the unity of Nigeria doesn't depend on oil, if it's only oil, then the north would broken off as soon as the oil is discovered and keep in mind that the north has the advantage of producing it's own food. Think of what will happen if meat, onions, beans e.t.c are no longer moved from the north to the south.
Keep in mind that there are also a lot of solid minerals in commercial quantities in almost every state in the North. Borno and Zamfara has gold, Yobe has gypsum, limestone, Bauchi has uranium, Gombe has coal, Kebbi has just discovered a very large quantity of iron ore. These are only a few examples.
Don't forget that the North is the only part of the country that has almost succeeded in overcoming it's ehtnic differences. I think this is why most southerners assume that the north is made of only the Hausas. Infact some parts of the North (e.g North-East) do not originally have Hausas at all. The Hausas you find there are those that have settled there and naturalized. That type of fusion is what needs to be extended all across the country.

I think most of the highly emotional talk on this thread is due to lack of knowledge of Nigeria as a whole. If one travels across Nigeria and experienced both the North and the South, he will hardly make such statements. I grew up in the North and served in Abia state. I discovered that the averge Nigerian's needs are the same all across. I think what we need is to face our problems not just by pointing fingers at our political elite but by putting our houses in order. I mean house literally here. Hey when did you last fill a pot-hole on the road or cleared the drainage in your neighbourhood. When last did you decide not to shunt in a queue when offered a chance. The little efforts we make is what will accumulate and become the great changes. Those little efforts is what will maybe lead us to resist election rigging at our neighbourhood's polling station. The people of Bauchi have done it in 2007, why can't we spread it all across?

I'm really surprised that people are trying to show sympathy to the Yusufiyya sect simply for political reasons.
You should know that those of us that are in Maiduguri don't have a problem with how Muhammad Yusuf was executed. All that matters is that he should be executed. The Yusufiyya sect have been threatening lives for a very long period in Maiduguri. They have drawn up an assassination list of top Islamic clerics. They do not consider anybody a Muslim except if you belong to their sect. They have broken families, widowed many women, orphaned many children and openly threatened to fight the Government. There have been special prayers against them in mosques all across Maiduguri. We were complaining that the government is not doing anything, and now that the government has taken a decisive action all of a sudden people are talking of human rights and extra-judicial killings. It's really annoying that nobody cares about the feelings of the residents of Maiduguri whom this sect have been keeping in a perpetual state of fear.

About BBC, VOA and Co., don't believe anything they say. They were not allowed into the crisis area. Most of the stories they give you are based on hearsay. Even the name "Boko Haram" was concocted by the Hausa service of the BBC. The sect were called the Yusufiyya sect by the people of Maiduguri. Just imagine, well after everything was over, france24 was saying that there are still gun battles going on in Maiduguri.

And about Buji Foi, he has resigned from government work long ago when he joined the sect.

Seeing that you have data for the US and UK, how come none exist for Nigeria?

@ElRazur, please be patient enough to read my posts. You even quoted my statement that states 7.8% for Nigeria.
Making it more clear

U.S.A    66.1%
U.K       10.1%
Nigeria   7.8%

Please don't rush into condemning yourself.

The point I'm trying to make is that we do not deserve the internet scam crown that we have been given. Please try not to ignore the statistics, US is at 66.1% while we are at 7.8% and the UK is at 10.1%. Yet they refer to scam e-mails as "Nigerian Scam" and not "American Scam". The fact that we have internet scam doesn't mean it should be unjustly celebrated like it is being done now.

This was originally posted in my blog

Everybody agrees that Internet fraudsters or yahoo boys as they are called in Nigeria are doing the most damage to Nigeria's image abroad. I'm also among those who agree but regrettably without any statistics to back our argument. Fortunately real statistics is proving us all wrong. According to Farooq Kperogi's column "Notes From Atlanta" in Weekly Trust of 4/7/2009, if statistics are anything to go by, then Internet scam should be termed "American Scam" and not "Nigerian Scam". Figures from the Internet Crimes Complaint Center shows that 76% to 87% of all Internet crimes reported from 2001 to 2008 were committed by Americans. In 2008 only 7.8% of such fraud was committed by Nigerians while America and UK has 66.1% and 10.1% respectively.

As a whole scam e-mails which Nigerians are known for, constitutes less than 3% of overall on-line crimes. This has decreased from 15.5% in 2001 to less than 3% in 2008. So why is the western media making so much noise about "Nigerian Scam" and keeping shut about the "Massive American On-line Crime" ?
I agree with Farooq that Nigerians especially those in the west have not help matters also. They always try to emphasize the bad image of Nigeria maybe to justify their self exile in the west. I think our journalists are also doing a lot of damage. It seems they concentrate on reporting mainly the corruption cases in Nigeria. I'm not saying there is no corruption, but can't they find somethings positive to report in a country of 140 million people, At least to maintain a balance ?.

Imagine the insult most of us were subjected to by having our on-line transactions stopped (especially by American companies) simply because we reside in Nigeria. Maybe the Nigerian Minister Of Information is not crazy after all, we need to re-brand Nigeria.

Very interesting, A simple question raising a lot of dust.
We've had a similar argument debate a few years before.
Check this topic and help yourself
make the right decision.

I think we shouldn't judge the industry by the big players (I'm not going to call names). If you look carefully they are only targeting the banks and the
financial institutions. That means they have left the greater part of the market untapped. Look at the number of people owning laptops now. A rough estimate tells me that at least on in every 20 university students owns a laptop now. Think of the profit you will make if you come up with a killer application that targets Nigerian university student. Make the price of your product so low that every student can afford, put enough security features that will make difficult to pirate. Don't just look at the big spenders, instead look at the greater number of small spenders.

Software developers must also be able to do their initial research well e.g how much pain the product will take away, how to deliver it to the target customers, how you get paid by your customers, how you give support to your customers e.t.c.

It seems to me a lot of programmers in Nigeria are underestimating their end-users IT knowledge and kept creating low quality software.
Another reason why we never see the made in Nigeria software is because most of them are custom-developed for organizations and not pre-packaged products you will see in the market.

One area I agree ogra2k2 is that the future of Nigerian software is not in the hands of those big software companies with programmers that look more like bankers or lawyers. The future is in the hands of the small time programmers with small teams that write software on contract for those big companies.

I don't know wether somebody has posted something similar but I hope this will help

I am using ubuntu linux 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) with the Huawei E170 usb modem supplied by MTN.

If you are also using ubuntu 8.10 then things are a bit more easier. The following steps are what you need to do.

1- Right click on the network icon on the top panel and select "Edit Connections" this will bring up the network connections window

2- Select "Mobile Broadband" tab

3- Click on "Add". A wizard (druid in linux) will come up

4- Select Nigeria from the country list and you will get a list of mobile operators in Nigeria.

5- Select MTN , click "Next" and "Apply"

The next time you left-click on the network icon on the panel you will get a list of connections. Select the one you just created "MTN" and you will be connected.

Now you are ready to start surfing.

If this didn't work or you are not using ubuntu 8.10 then you can try using wvdial utility
more info at http://a-ig..com/2009/03/mtn-3g-and-linux.html

good work there. But the slogan "strictly for Nigerians" gives the impression that
non-Nigerians are not welcomed on the site. Or is that intentional ?

A conference organized by Hutsoft Nigeria LTD and Center For Information Technology (C.I.T) of Bayero University Kano.
It took place from 6-9 March 2009. Many reasons made this conference different.

1- It was all about free software
2- It was a conference which jeans (& sometimes Kaftan) wearing programmers and not suit wearing businessmen delivered talks.
3- It took place in Kano, one of the most culturally conservative towns in the North. Even other Northerners find a lot of things about Kano really interesting.
4- At least 400-500 new open source software users/developers were made.
5- Kano state through it's commissioner of Science and Technology have thrown it's weight behind the idea of deploying Open Source Software in government.

Talks were given by the vice president of K.D.E foundation Adrian de Groot, Ibrahim A. Dasuma of Hutsoft Nigeria, Jonathan Riddel of Canonical (makers of Ubuntu Linux), Mustapha Abubakar also of Hutsoft, Dr Bashir Galadanchi (Kano state commissioner of science and technology) e.t.c

I wanted to post some pics from the conference but it's like Jonathan Riddle has already posted some in his blog and flickr.

Jonathan's blog
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3915

flickr
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jriddell/sets/72157614991241443/


I know some of the organizers and I know they use to hang around on Nairaland. I don't know wether they have announced the conference on Nairaland but
I though they did. So I was looking forward to meeting some Nairalanders in person at the conference. Unfortunately that didn't happen.
Who knows maybe we'll get some Nairalanders at FOSS Nigeria 2010 or even get Seun to give a talk.

Hi, I've done some small programming on mono/Linux. Nothing complicated, no gui.
It's a command line tool we use to generate licence keys for a software my team developed.
It's written in c# and compiled with the new mono c# compiler gmcs.

I used monodevelop on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy)

Viral Computers Inc - Developers of the reputable Vino Softwares

Software not softwares.
Good job man. Hope you tackled the problems well. I advice you get a website for
your products.

Like Ayinkus pointed out. All you need to do is adjust the connectionstring of your database connection
within your vb program to specify the machine where the database is located and you're good to go.
But that will work with client/server databases like MSSQL server. If you're using access then I think you'll need
to migrate your database to a mature database system like MSSQL.

I think swing is meant to be a replacement for AWT.
I suggest you use swing.

@dasersoft, I couldn't agree more. As if you read my mind

It's good that programmers here are coming together on projects.
But I think it would be good if they will give a list of the projects they
are working on for potential contributors to see how they can lend
a hand.

Installshield ain't free but you can try NSIS (nsis.sourceforge.net)
It's free and very powerful.

Yeah, wxWidgets is great but it's not a new thing. It's been there for some time and is really matured for cross platform development.
You can also use it with non-C++ languages like C#,VB.NET (wx.NET) , python (wxPython) e.t.c. Some stable and mature programs have
been developed with it. The ones I can remember include;
- Audacity = a high quality audio editing software
- flamerobin = a gui frontend to firebird database.

I've never used OFBiz server but I understand that it's some kind of application server.
Now you need to research a little and find out how to start OFBIz server from the command line.

Go to Menu->Accessories->command prompt

type in the command to see if it works.

Now open a new text file using notepad

Type in the command that starts OFBiz server
Type in the command to open your url in the browser like you did using the run menu

save the file with a .bat extension. Note that notepad appends .txt to whatever file you save.
To avoid that put the file name in quotation e.g "startapp.bat" to avoid getting startapp.bat.txt from notepad.

Now double click on the batch file to run the commands inside it.

Hope that helps.

To be sure that the problem is from the iexplore line, try this

First make sure your web server is running

go to start menu -> run and enter the command iexplore <url of you app>

Inernet explorer should start and go to the url you specified.

By the way, which webserver are you using ?

I don't know which server you are using but I know there must be a way of starting it from the command line.
Put the command in a batch file followed by a command to launch your browser with the appopriate url.

1- create a file with any name and a .bat extension e.g startapp.bat
2- Put the following in it

a. command to launch your webserver e.g c:\apache\bin\apache.exe
b. command to launch your browser e.g iexplore http:\\localhost:pathtoapp

Note that iexplore launches internet explorer and opens any url passed to it.

the bat file acts like a program executing the commands inside it. Run it to lauch your app.

but I believe there is a way of making your web sever run as a system service such it starts when the
operating system starts and stops when the operating system stops. If you can make it that way the
you dont have to worry about starting the server. All you need then is a web shortcut on your desktop
pointing to the url of your app.

Hope that helps

IG no no anything, e bi like say nah software d guy/girl dey write

@smartsoft, actually am a guy and thanx a lot for letting me know that I don't know anything.

why do we have Web Based accounting Software which runs on Internet and a local server ! now you see with your webserver, it can be conneted to use your intranet, whereby you oga wey dey the 11th floor can access your portal say for instance, A Staff Database built using PHP/MYSQL with just a link and he/she logs in.

Now you are beginning to answer yourself. PHP and MySQL, are they web based ?.
I assume that you know that it's possible to create network aware standalone apps. If you don't know then your browser is an example.

when we talk about Web based taking over standalone thing, we meant a Web Based Software which runs on your local server 24/7 unlike software if you computer crashes eh, thats means you are a dead rat, unlike Web Based thing you have a soft copy of the software, aslo you can backup database everyday, men try it on your Standalone and see the day the Hard-Disk will fail, then the entire stuff is dead, if you have Web Based Software, you can easily copy back and load back your Web Server, since you do the Backup of your database, men i tell you if you realy know what you are doing, you can wipe out Standalone software from your company

Now am honestly getting confused here, please pardon my ignoance but I you implying that web based apps don't keep there databases on a hard disk ? If that's the case then educate me more on this.
Please I also don't know what you mean by a soft copy of your software. Can one also have a hard copy of his software.
But you should know that you can also backup your database in a standalone app. By the way what happens if the system hosting your web server and the database crashes. Honestly I find your arguments confusing

So na wetin u can dey yarn me. don't know why people woun't admit. Yah you might say everybody design website or develops appl, well if you know what i mean we have designers and we have designers! so also we have Web Programmers and we have Programmers ! the Diff. between Ordinary and extra-ordinary is the Extra ! abeg make una clap for me jare

Good rap, so which one are you.

That graphcard site you showed eh let me tell you if you want your stuff to work with all the browser you want, you can do it so don't take that as an excuse unlike Software it has some kind of requirement to run on your PC

In standalone software, you develop for a particula platform and you'll be sure it will run. But in web apps you are not sure wether it will behave the same way in all browsers.

Take good look at a billing software Web based Billing Software, which helps you take in orders and process the the stuff and dumb money into your account. unlike standalone, so you want me to call the office and tell you that i want to place an order, next thing you starting asking me question puching them on your Standalone software " what are you doing" entrying my data manually, when the Web Based billing Software can take your order and process it within 3mins.

Now that's a good example of where web based apps fit well. If you read though my post you will see that I am never against web based apps but I'm actually against the idea of one size fits all.
Actually I didn't want to start an argument but this discussion is already beginning to sound like one.


IF THE ONLY TOOL YOU HAVE IS A HAMMER THEN EVERY PROBLEM BEGINS TO LOOK LIKE A NAIL

my2cents:
I guess one could equally argue that cell phones are on the way out as there are places where people have phones yet due to lack of light, can't charge which by implication means they can't use it.

The internet is it. Now, the extent of penetration is another thing. We can no longer afford to say for instance, "Well, nigeria is only 47 years old and America wasn't as advanced when it was the same age". Europe, for instance, hv a head-start on the US in terms of telecom because they dumped the land lines and went wireless long before the americans decided to jump in.

@my2cents I see your point, but a cell phone doesn't have to be connected to the mains for it to work. I guess that's why we find them relatively efficient
despite our poor power supply system. You connect it only for it to charge so that you can make use of it later. I guess this is analogous to a standalone software that can connect to the web to perform a certain function e.g updating an anti-virus.

My whole point is that we should apply technology to solve our problems and not simply because it's the vogue. Please don't forget that internet access is
only one of the constraints I mention but there are many other points I raised which apply with or without internet availability. Don't forget that web apps can run on a local network or even a local machine.

UPDATE I discovered a web based image editing system here : http://snipshot.com

Just a little correction. The correct spelling is "ISRAEL" an not "ISREAL".

Talking about U.S being afraid of ground battle in Africa, I believe that is true.
Hollywood has even made a movie about their embarassing outing in Somalia.
It's called "Black Hawk Down"

Recently I have been observing a lot of predictions that everything is going to be web based
in the future and the OS, the desktop along with standalone apps will either die naturally or just fail to
be relevant. I think that is taking the excitement beyond reality

I think this whole web hype is caused by the advent of Ajax and other similar technologies.
Ajax is the application of existing technologies in a smart way which I agree has a lot of
avantages but that doesn't mean it solves all software development problems.

Similar things were said in the past when java applets first came out but ironically one of
the reasons Java failed to be mainstream is it's poor performance on the desktop.

What the web advocates always fail to remember is that those web apps almost always
depend on standalone apps to run e.g web server, web browser, database management
systems e.t.c and therefore cannot replace standalone applications.


Designing those web apps always need to be done on some desktop and requires standalone
apps e.g compilers,interpreters,photo editing software, web design software e.t.c
I've never came across any web based compiler or video/image editing software but I admit
some people may try doing it.


We know that google have some very cool web based office apps like spread sheets e.t.c
I am personally of the view that using it for any seious work is counter intuitive.
You don't expect me to keep my important documents on somebody else's server and I
don't want my work to be subject to availabilty of internet.

Another important requirement is bandwidth. Now some of us may argue that the web app
can run completely on the local system. If that is the case then I think the aim of
making it web based is already defeated.


Developing web apps are most often more difficult than developing standalone apps
especially when you have to create really intuitive GUIs or when parts of your
program have to be "statefull".A lot of Web developers complain that session
management is a pain in the butt.

Deployment: Now this is where most people believe that web based apps are of the
most advantage but I don't always agree. I agree that centralized deployment is
easy with web apps but compare deploying a locally running web app
and a standalone app. In a standalone app you must probably will only need to
run an installer but a web app will probably need a web server well configured,
a database management system and some other supporting tools.
The point here is that not every application is client/server that will benefit
from centralized deployement.


With web based apps your apps may look different with different bowsers making the
dream of portability really only a dream. I recently came to understand that some
people still do use text based browsers. How do we handle them?


If you use IE specific features or something non-standard then you are also losing
portability. Try visiting graphcard.com with a non IE browser and you'll see
what I mean.

Security: Can be handled but the risks are higher

It's very difficult to write elegant code with server-side scripting, javascript/VBScript and HTML
like you can write with a single programming language when developing a standalone app.

Webapps don't operate peripheral devices like your digital camera,scanner,thumbprint reader
and I don't think you can play an on-line game with a control pad.



The point is that web based apps have their specific role in the software eco-system but thinking that
they can completely replace conventional apps is just taking it too far beyond reality. The web
was primally design to display document and not to take in data. Data intake and processing are after toughts
in the overall design of the web and you therefore can not expect it to be without difficulties.

Web apps are in my opinion are best for businesses that sell services on the net or similar cases and is not
the answer to all software development problems.


I think the real solution is not in taking everything to the web but in blurring the line between
desktop apps and web apps when needed. Web based apps are beginning to look a lot like desktop apps while
desktop apps are getting more and more webified.

Now I believe many people will disagree with my last point but it seems many people on this forum are advocating
web apps at all cost because it's the only thing they can make,many think that developing standalone apps is
too complex. My advice to them is that they should learn to learn new technologies at least for the sake of
comparing it with what they already know. It goes a long way clearing some wrong assumptions we may have.

denex:
I personally believe Obasanjo's administration was an absolute success.

Our telecommunications grew by about 6000%.

Wiped away our ever-present National debt from a $30 billion debt to virtually nothing.

Standardized the banking industry to what it is today, banks capital base has increased by 400%.

Same administration caused a rise of per capita income from about $300 to $1,500 (400%).


Built us a Foreign Reserve from nothing to $40 billion (40000000000%)


Federation account which now stands between $9 billion and $12 billion (900000000%).


I could go on forever, but let me allow others contribute.

If Yar'Adua's administration can create and environment where wages will increase by 1000%, foreign reserves by 40000000000%, Federation Account by 9000000000%, Telecommunications by 6000%, per capita income by 400% and Commercial Banks capital base successfully by another 400%, then Nigeria is heaven.

@denex, it seems to me you are really at home with zeroes. All the 900000000% e.t.c . I just hope you don't lose track of them yourself.

@fallguy, I think the problem is not in OOP but in how we use OOP. A good way out is to remove the parts that
don't fit into "mould" and implement them seperately. You can use a design pattern called "Strategy". I think
at some point OOP programmers need some understanding of design patterns. It's a way of extending OOP and
making it work in situation where it may normally seem difficult or impossible.
Do some googling on "Design Patterns"

That's a very shoddy analogy if what you wanted to pinpoint was 'corruption'. at least you can be sure that after the 'Experts' have spoken, a determined attempt will be made to rectify all lapses in maintaining bridges around the country. If that happened in Naija? All experts would be ignored. When three planes crashed in 2 years in Nigeria without any major effort from the Aviation Industry, now that's corruption.

@texazzpete, are you trying to tell me that the US government left more 100,000 bridges to suffer simply
because they don't know that the bridges need maintenance ? The steps you are saying are being taken
are simply because the world now knows there is a problem.

The white part of South Africa used to be a major player in the world of technology. Don't forget that the South Africans even had nukes once upon a time. They have a vastly superior telecommunications industry (heck, they've been enjoyiong cheap broadband and 3G for years) to ours. Before Soludo's capitalisation, the second largest bank in SA was bigger than all our banks put together.

What is the importance of 3G e.t.c if an old woman can not feel secure in her house (Locked with chains). I believe even in the high crime areas of Nigeria
there is still some respect for old people. We still call our old ones "mama" or "papa". Our area boys do not kill old people just like that talkless of killing old wheel chaired women.

The point is that in Nigerians have not completely lost their souls to materialism. There are a lot of bad things happening in Nigeria but we're not as bad as we are being portrayed.

@helen, you couldn't get it better. I agree with you.
The whole thing is not about being black or white. It's about the
opressors and the opressed, corruption and transparency.

I think the effects of corruption are beginning to manifest even in U.S.A.
Take the issue of the recent bridge collapse. Experts say that about two third of
the bridges in USA are right now at risk of collapsing due to lack of maintenance.
The government has ignored its responsibilities at home and is spending billions fighting
an unjustified war. Now that's a classic example of corruption.

If this is happening in Nigeria, people will start saying it's because we (Nigerian/Blacks) are
corrupt. Guys, we need to get any traces of inferiority out of our heads if we want to succeed at all.

my2cents:
all this excitement over female programmer, make una no get wet dream o! LMAO

I never knew one can get a wet dream by just discussing with a female on a forum. But since you fear getting
a wet dream, I recomend you see a doctor. Sorry we're only programmers, we can't help you on that.

I'm happy that there are objective people on Nairaland but it seems to me that
they are like the minority. What is really wrong with the rest of us ?